How to end ‘canning’

Along with new leaves on the trees and shrubs, grass greening up and genuine warmth in the sunshine, another sure sign of spring is the sight of people, including kids, “canning” at busy Staten Island intersections.

Of course, canning is nothing more than panhandling in the middle of streets teeming with traffic, ostensibly for a good cause. (The worthiness of the cause can sometimes be called into question, however.)

In the past, we’ve seen kids from youth sports leagues, and members of school and church groups and others standing in the street holding out cans and exhorting passing drivers to give them money. They occasionally wear uniforms or identification badges to establish their legitimacy. Or sometimes they simply carry signs to urge drivers to “Help the Homeless” as if that proves where the money goes.

Are they all frauds? Hardly. In fact, most are probably not, although the members of a purported church group recently spotted canning at the corner of Narrows Road North and Richmond Road in Concord are known to have a murky affiliation with a Florida-based minister who just happens to live a luxurious lifestyle.

It doesn’t matter if the canners’ motives are larcenous or pure as the driven snow. The point is that canning is dangerous. It puts both those doing the canning and drivers at risk. Driving on Staten Island is hard enough without having to navigate through people standing in the roadway.

And then you have to ask this: Whatever worthy cause the group claims to be collecting for, what kind of leaders — of churches, leagues, schools, clubs, etc. — would order their members, including kids on occasion, to sift through moving cars? The answer is leaders who don’t have the energy or the imagination to organize a car wash, a bake sale or a bazaar and who don’t care enough for their members’ safety. So they deploy people into busy streets to beg for money.

The other thing is that, because of this obvious danger, canning is illegal.

But, despite the danger and the illegality, some money-hungry groups still seem to think canning is OK, regardless of this borough’s recent history of pedestrians being killed and injured on our streets. Amazing.

Obviously, the police have other business to attend to and don’t make canning an enforcement priority, but we urge drivers who think they’re helping people by giving to canners to reconsider.

Want to really do them a favor? Pass them right by. Don’t even roll down your window. If more drivers with the urge to be generous to canners in the street would do this, the lazy organizations that rely on canning would have to figure out better ways to raise money and the practice would stop once and for all.